Land and the Self: A Psychoanalytic Reading of Three Novels by Tim Winton

by
Vanessa Richards

September 24, 2009

Australian author Tim Winton’s depiction of the Australian landscape and his characters’ extraordinary relationship with the land lends itself to a psychoanalytic critique using object relations theory. Winton’s position as one of Australia’s most celebrated and popular contemporary writers makes his novels particularly relevant for this kind of analysis. In this essay, I argue that three novels in particular, Dirt Music (2001), The Riders (1994), and That Eye, The Sky (1986), represent part of a continuum of Australian writing that is preoccupied with the theme of land and identity. I suggest that psychoanalytic theories of splitting, projective identification, transference, and of unconscious fears and fantasies may be useful for the purpose of understanding this preoccupation and to help illuminate the European Australian experience, in a broader sense, of land and identity.

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I’m connected to the land and the landscape and the sea‚ and the colour of the light‚ and the smell of the eucalypts‚ the whole thing. I wouldn’t say it’s a kind of new Aboriginality‚ I wouldn’t even feel that I needed to even chase after the term‚ but it’s a feeling of belonging.
– Tim Winton(Rossiter 13)

It is almost impossible to think critically about representations of the relationship between literary characters and their environment without reflecting on the nature of our own relationship to the land and the role it plays in the development of who we are as individuals‚ and as a community. Three novels by Tim Winton‚ Dirt Music (2001)‚ The Riders (1994) and That Eye‚ The Sky (1986)‚ with their preoccupation with Australian landscapes depicted in stories set both in and outside Australia‚ reveal characters whose sense of self is profoundly linked to rural and coastal Australian landscapes and the nonhuman world. As communities worldwide begin to focus on the environment in the wake of climate change‚ it is increasingly urgent that the role that the land and the nonhuman environment play in our emotional development should come under new scrutiny.

In this essay I focus on unconscious emotional lives that are merely expressed through a relationship with the land‚ and not about conscious thoughts and feelings about the land‚ per se‚ but it is nevertheless important to consider the context of the land in the cultural imagination. Ideas about Australian identity and attitudes to the land have been popularised by journalists and so-called cultural commentators in continuing debates.1 In particular‚ the idea that Australian national identity goes hand-in-hand with connectedness–or the lack of it–to the land has particular currency in mainstream and even conservative publications. It has been argued that Australians have historically had a “projective” relationship towards the Australian land throughout Australian literature (Greer 6) and that novels and poems by Australian writers such as Henry Lawson‚ Patrick White‚ Les Murray‚ David Malouf and Thomas Keneally offer examples of the fraught relationship between the European settler and his new‚ foreign landscape (Pierce xii). Bruce Bennett has suggested that Winton’s characters are to some degree the “legatees of Lawson’s bush men and women‚” and that in his depiction of the Western Australian coastline and the characters who live there Winton is trying to prove to the “urban sophisticates”–who presumably are the vast majority of Winton’s readership–that “stoical‚ humorous‚ bloody-minded independents... still exist at land’s edge‚ though now at the edges of Australian consciousness” (283).

Around the time of Federation‚ there was a shift in attitude from a dislike for the Australian landscape in the national literature to a belief that “the truly Australian writer would possess a love of the landscape and find it beautiful in a way that earlier generations could not do” (Barnes 88):

With Lawson‚ the ‘Bush’ is a continual presence‚ an emotionally potent factor in the lives of the people–an inescapable fate of suffering‚ loneliness‚ madness and emotional blight‚ occasionally redeemed by acts of mateship. All Lawson’s writing testifies to his bondage to the experiences of his youth. His nationality expresses itself in his feeling for the ‘Bush’‚ not as scenery but as something experienced within himself (101-2).

This understanding of Lawson’s works resonates with my reading of Tim Winton’s novels. While Winton’s characters may indeed be the “legatees of Lawson’s bush men and women” in some ways‚ Winton’s work represents the shift away from negative characterisations of the land. Winton’s men and women do not so much suffer from the cruelties of a hostile land as they do from the regular trials and tribulations of everyday life and the complexities of interpersonal relationships. As Winton’s families are generations older than those of Lawson’s stories‚ they are far removed from the experiences of Lawson’s settler families‚ whose primary concern was manipulating the land to better suit their European requirements and to come to terms‚ emotionally and physically‚ with the “foreign.” The land in Winton’s novels‚ however‚ is something the characters‚ like it or not‚ are already deeply attached to and emotionally invested in–it is an “object” into which his characters can project their unconscious fantasies.

How does this process work? As we know‚ psychoanalysis and‚ in particular‚ object relations theory‚ provides a wonderfully imaginative and useful framework for the study of the complex dynamic between the external world and the inner life. It allows us to see our relationship to the land–or more simply‚ the places in which we live–as being as integral to our emotional development as our human relationships are. This way of reading Winton’s novels is pertinent to the understanding of the European Australian experience of the land and the formation of identity. Winton’s position as one of Australia’s most celebrated and popular contemporary writers makes his novels relevant for this kind of analysis. Three of his novels in particular‚ Dirt Music‚ The Riders‚ and That Eye‚ The Sky represent part of a continuum of Australian writing that is preoccupied with the theme of land and identity.

The omnipresence of the land and natural elements in Winton’s fiction is both powerful and disturbing. In Dirt Music‚ The Riders and That Eye‚ The Sky‚ the Australian natural environment is not merely a backdrop to the stories of protagonists Georgie Jutland and Luther Fox (Dirt Music)‚ Fred Scully (The Riders)‚ and Ort Flack (That Eye‚ The Sky). In these novels the land occupies the part of another “character” in the text. Winton’s characters’ relationship with the various landscapes they inhabit reveals a host of complex inner lives that rely on interaction with landscape for expression. At times‚ the land and natural elements echo the characters’ mood‚ giving an external expression to a usually fearful or confused internal world‚ or it is an “object” that the characters use to “project” their fantasies and imaginations on to (Ben-Messahel 104).2 At other times it is the hostile Other–or “bad object”–a punishing‚ unforgiving deity that is keeping a watchful eye over its inhabitants. 3 Or it is the loving and nurturing “good object‚” offering the protagonists sanctuary from the difficulties of life and other persecutors‚ both real and imagined (Watzke 24). And at still other times‚ it is an overwhelming‚ frightening force that gives rise to existential fears as it threatens the stability of the family unit (Ben-Messahel 25-6):

The forest moves quiet tonight. Jarrahs move a long way up and out of sight. Now and then I hear little animal noises. All these trees are dying‚ and all these little animals will have nowhere to live. One day the whole world will die and we’ll die too. My back hurts and my bum stings and the backs of my legs too. I’ve got no clothes on out here in the forest. Prickles and burrs and twigs stick in me all over. I rub them in‚ squirm and shake around. It hurts a lot. I’m hurting myself. I want to hurt myself. I want to. (Winton‚ That Eye 42)

While not wishing to imply that Ort is suffering from schizophrenia‚ Ort’s experience of the inner and outer worlds as “distorted‚” as represented in the above passage‚ resonates with Harold Searles’ work with schizophrenic patients. Searles found that schizophrenic patients’ “spatial relations” were “impaired.” In his clinical examples‚ patients showed “various degrees of impairment of ego differentiation‚ ranging all the way from a total inability to demarcate anything of the self from the environment‚ to the projection of certain specific parts of the self onto the environment” (308). They had lost “the ability to integrate objects in space‚” and “[t]he stability of the outer world is lost. Corners lose their rectangularity; solid objects move; lines and planes bend... ‘The walls flap in the breeze like tapestries–they run like melted wax.’ ‘The floor flows like a river’” (310). 4 This warped view of the nonhuman environment‚ according to Searles‚ can be attributed to “the subject’s loss of ego differentiation‚ allowing the projection upon the nonhuman environment of an instability which in reality characterizes the patient’s psychological state; he mistakenly experiences his instability as an outer one”(310).

In a dream sequence that occurs after his father is incapacitated in a road accident‚ Ort is lying on his back at the edge of the forest (or at the edge of “the great unknown”) and looking to the moon (Winton‚ That Eye 67). He experiences the sensation of the ground “shivering like it was cold or frightened or finishing a leak” (67). The shivering sensation enters into Ort’s back. He sees leaves and twigs fall from the trees and the house “kind of puffing and panting” (67). Ort is eventually “sucked” into the house where:

Plates and cups came out of the cupboards and smashed on the floor‚ the piano was going like a cut cat‚ playing something I never heard before‚ the TV was on its face‚ smashed‚ sliding across the room. The sofa with the crummy brown flowers was running around the loungeroom and I got the hell out (68).

Ort is experiencing an overwhelming “instability”: grief at the sight of his father’s damaged body after he is severely injured in a road accident‚ bewilderment at his father’s loss of communication (coming at a time when Ort is experiencing the confusion of adolescence‚ accompanied as it is with a different form of inhibited communication)‚ and fear after the arrival of a strange man‚ Henry Warburton‚ who would appear to be taking the place of his father. In his dream‚ Ort has projected his instability onto both the land and natural elements outside‚ and the inanimate objects inside his house. He experiences an “inner chaos–confusion‚ craziness‚ messiness‚ bewildering change” (Searles 312).

Ort’s belief that there is a “crazy cloud” hanging over his farm that is communicating with him is a fine example of a transference relationship occurring between the human subject and the nonhuman environment at times of distress. Ort sees the cloud as “crazy” because to him the changes going on in his family are indeed “crazy.” Ort is also beginning to fear that he is the crazy one‚ so shaken up is his sense of stability in the world. Without the skills to express his fears to his mother‚ the only person who might be receptive to his feelings of confusion (but who‚ in her own grief is quite incapable at this point of containing Ort)‚ the cloud becomes the focal point for his sense of bewilderment. It is the object into which Ort can project his frightening‚ “bad” feelings.

Ort remains emotionally immature and unable to reach what Searles has described as some of the essential features of the “healthy” person: “a full realization and acceptance of his status as a human being” with the range of responsibilities that the status implies (102-3). But the symptoms of the “failure to differentiate” between the human and nonhuman is also an experience of the “healthy” person‚ according to Searles‚ because it is impossible for human beings to maintain a “secure” sense of their own “humanness” in relation to the nonhuman environment all of the time (103-4). Searles writes that “there is no human being so mature” and:

so secure in his sense of kinship with the nonhuman environment‚ that he does not at times[...] yearn to relinquish his human status and be able to be an untroubled dog or a tree; or become so involved in the problems of human living that he feels quite out of touch really‚ with the nourishing ground of Nature” (104).

This seems to be part of the experience that drives Luther Fox’s desire to abandon modern life and live in the bush in Dirt Music. Fox displays something of the “delusion” that in his rejection of the human he can live in “union” with the nonhuman environment (102). But in Fox’s abdication of human responsibilities‚ that of being part of a community and maintaining relationships with other people‚ and in his quest to live “as one” with nature‚ he is bound to fail‚ for it is the “inevitable” predicament of human beings to be forever “grounded in Nature‚ and yet unbridgeably apart from it” (104). Ironically for Fox‚ the natural elements he longs to lose himself in embody haunting memories of his family‚ killed in a road accident:

Swims in a winy sea. All around him‚ in a mist‚ the piping breaths of the dead; they surge and swirl and fin beneath‚ roundabout‚ alongside him. It smells of soil‚ their breath‚ of soil and creekmud and melons (Winton‚ Dirt Music 159).

For the subject‚ therefore‚ a change in the environment‚ a move to another place with a different landscape‚ for example‚ can prove useless in the quest to escape the past. While Fox is indeed inevitably part of nature and yet apart from it‚ he is also inevitably bound to recast his environment in such a way as to allow him to project old fantasies onto new objects.

In Dirt Music and That Eye‚ The Sky‚ the city and the signifiers of urbanisation are positioned as hostile‚ threatening entities‚ representing the destruction of natural landscapes and the introduction of lifestyles devoid of meaning. For Ort‚ Otherness is manifested in the land outside the Flack family’s isolated property. Ort associates the city‚ and the relentless urbanisation encroaching ever nearer‚ with the inevitability of growing up. For his sister Tegwyn‚ however‚ the city represents an escape from her oppressive family life. Yet as readers‚ we are encouraged to pity her desire to seek a life in the outside world. Tegwyn only wants to leave the farm because she is “messed up”. Ort‚ on the other hand‚ like Lu Fox and Fred Scully‚ lacks curiosity about the world‚ relishing his isolation:

I love it when we sit out here at night feeling the hot day go away and listen to the forest making its night noise. Sometimes when a car goes past out on the road‚ you get kind of surprised that there are other people in the world. (Winton‚ That Eye 60)

The presence of “other people in the world” is barely felt‚ as Ort gets further involved in his family troubles on the farm. Devastated at the sight of his helpless father‚ Ort retreats into a world of his own making where the sky replaces his father as his protector (Ben-Messahel 39-40). Ort’s family home and the landscape around it take on new meaning in the face of his father’s ill-health‚ and in the face of Ort’s imminent step from primary school to high school‚ from childhood into adolescence. Here‚ the natural environment beyond the boundaries of the family farm represents the danger of the wider world.

In Dirt Music‚ The Riders‚ and That Eye‚ The Sky‚ white inhabitants of rural landscapes come to view the land as “mystical” or “spiritual.” Deborah Bird-Rose’s book‚ Nourishing Terrains‚ looks closely at Aboriginal people’s relationship with landscapes and the natural environment and attempts to do so in their own words (1). Bird-Rose’s work draws attention to the sacredness of the land to Aboriginal people. Winton invokes Aboriginal cultural beliefs about the land‚ imbuing his European Australian characters’ relationship with the land with the same sacred quality. Meanwhile‚ Winton’s marginal‚ urban-dwelling characters‚ invariably Anglo-Celtic Australians‚ remain ignorant to the land’s “magical” qualities. Indeed‚ those who live in the towns and the cities of Australia and beyond are represented as spiritually and morally bankrupt. The citizens of the crowded metropolises of Paris and London are unfriendly and mean-spirited in The Riders‚ the encroaching township in That Eye‚ The Sky is a menacing threat‚ and in Dirt Music‚ Georgie Jutland’s city-dwelling family are self-absorbed and silly.

Cocooned in the bush‚ Winton’s characters reject foreign landscapes and the “sophisticated” urban lifestyles and cosmopolitanism that accompany them (Rutherford 133).5 They are at times deeply threatened‚ inward looking and xenophobic. In The Riders‚ Scully experiences Europe as threatening and persecutory because he feels culturally “inferior” (131). Consumed with bad feelings about himself–his preoccupation with his status as a blue-collar worker‚ his belief that he is “ugly‚” uncouth and “unworthy” of Jennifer’s love‚ and his feelings of “stupidity” at having followed her to the other side of the world only to be abandoned–Scully projects his hate and scorn into the Europeans he meets and into the European landscape (133-6):

Paris. This time he’d get the best of the bloody place. This time he was free‚ just passing through. And he wasn’t as green as he used to be. No pouting landlords to deal with‚ no scaly ringworm ceilings of the rich and tightarsed‚ no looks down the Gallic nose that he’d once had to take humbly‚ thinking of payday. The drudgery and anxiety of illegal work was gone–nights lying awake stinking of turps with fists like cracked bricks. This time he’d kiss no bums. No apologies for his hideous French or his hopeless clothes. No reason why he couldn’t enjoy himself. This time he was taking no prisoners (Winton‚ The Riders 252).

Winton’s Australian “heroes” (for they are overwhelmingly male protagonists) represent an idealised and popularised Australian national identity‚ one described by Jennifer Rutherford as a “fantasy” of all that is “innocent” and “goodly.” The “Good Australian” is engaged in an unrelenting battle against a persecutory “foreign Other‚” one that threatens to “steal his masculinity‚ paternity‚ dignity and ultimately his identity” (Rutherford 133-4).

This “fantasy of Australianness” (Rutherford 133) is accompanied by a fantasy of a similar power–that of a redemptive Australian landscape. In Dirt Music‚ Lu Fox’s nomadic journey through the Kimberley comes after he has burned all of his life’s papers and come into contact with two Aboriginal men‚ Axle and Menzies. Local hermit and illegal fisherman‚ Fox (whose first name‚ Luther‚ could be interpreted as a reference to the Christian revolutionary Martin Luther)‚ walks across country in a style reminiscent of both an Aboriginal walkabout and a barefoot Christian pilgrimage (Ben-Messahel 218-19). After Fox has fled White Point to get “lost” in the outback of the Kimberley region‚ he is “entering spiritually into land” (13). Rather than displaying the hostility of the European settlers in the Australian literature of the past‚ here Winton offers a man who is ready and willing to embrace the Aboriginal belief that the land does not belong to him. Rather‚ he “belongs to the land” (12). Through Lu Fox’s rejection of modern life‚ Winton attempts to show that it is not the land that is empty but the “Whiteman’s heart” (Greer 7). Fox’s sorrow and melancholia‚ his disconnection to the modern world and his affinity to the natural one is perhaps an expression of Winton’s own beliefs: that white Australia’s redemption–for the crime of dispossessing Aboriginal communities‚ for the destruction of Aboriginal culture and environment–lies in rejecting urbanisation and embracing the natural environment.6

That Eye‚ The Sky is imbued with Christian imagery (Ben-Messahel 202-3). 7 Ort’s new interest in the cloud and his belief that the sky is his protector begins at the same time he is introduced to the idea of Christianity by the wandering preacher‚ Henry Warburton. While it is possible to interpret the sky and the “crazy” cloud that hangs over the Flack family farm as a substitute for Ort’s father after his father’s accident‚ and while a psychoanalytic critique would be more inclined to interpret the Oedipal symbolism in this relationship‚ there is no mistaking the implication of the cloud and sky in the novel’s exploration of Ort’s burgeoning Christian faith. Ort’s understanding of Christianity is helped along by his interaction with the natural world. For Ort‚ “That Eye‚ The Sky” is understood‚ at least at a conscious level‚ as the eye of God and the sky and clouds become symbols of his newfound religious faith.

She looks in from the sky. Eyes wide as a fish’s. Real or not‚ he should breathe. He feels his lips split in a smile. Soon. There’s plenty of time for that. Georgie saw his eyes roll back and his hips lift toward her. My God‚ he was blue. The bleeding pilot drew his legs back in horror and Jim Buckridge bellowed. Georgie froze. She was as struck as she’d ever been in her life. Luther Fox began to convulse.
Well‚ said the guide. You’re the nurse.
Yes‚ she thought. That is what I do.
She fell on Luther Fox‚ pressed her mouth to his and blew.
She’s real (Winton‚ Dirt Music 460-1).

In That Eye‚ The Sky‚ Ort uses the sky and land to engage in projective identification. His fear of having to go to senior school‚ his reluctance to enter into adolescence‚ and his grief and confusion at the sight of his damaged father‚ are all feelings he attempts to project into his mother. Ort’s mother‚ consumed with her own grief and fear‚ is unable to receive and process Ort’s feelings. As a consequence‚ the sky‚ and more broadly‚ the natural environment‚ becomes the external object that Ort uses in his process of projective identification. The sky provides a positive mode of communication. Ort projects his feelings into the sky and gets a sense that his feelings have been understood. He is comforted and reassured. He gains a sense of stability through the consistency of night and day‚ light and dark and the ever-changing cloud formations. Furthermore‚ as his father is left unable to communicate and carry out his parental role‚ Ort re-enacts his relationship with his father‚ indeed with both his parents‚ through the sky:

The sky is the same colour as Mum and Dad’s eyes. When you look at it long enough‚ like I am now with my nose up in it‚ it looks exactly like an eye anyway. One big blue eye‚ just looking down. At us (Winton‚ That Eye 4).

In Dirt Music‚ too‚ a depressed Fox departs White Point after his affair with Georgie and enters into a hostile‚ unforgiving country. As Fox makes his way North‚ catching lifts with truck drivers‚ the landscape echoes Fox’s loneliness and suffering:

They ride in silence the rest of the morning with the cricket trickling in like water torture from the radio. The aircon dries the perspiration then chills him. As they lurch inland‚ the trailers swaying behind them‚ the country grows dry and low and wheat gives out to sheep paddocks which seem thinner and more marginal until only squat mulga scrub remains; just olive dabs of vegetation spread over stony yellow dirt. (Winton‚ Dirt Music 219)

Here‚ Fox has projected his “bad” feelings–of loneliness‚ guilt‚ and grief–into the landscape‚ yet he believes that the landscape is the source of these feelings.For Fox‚ what can be described as an example of projective identification can also be seen as a display of the characteristics of mourning‚ as explained in Freud’s theories of mourning and melancholia. As we know‚ Freud formulated that mourning and melancholia could be observed in “the reaction to the loss of a loved person‚ or to the loss of some abstraction which has taken the place of one‚ such as one’s country‚ liberty‚ an ideal‚ and so on” (252). In The Riders‚ Scully’s search for Jennifer‚ both his lost object and his persecutor‚ has pathological qualities and his behaviour resonates with Freud’s formulations on melancholia. He experiences “an extraordinary diminution in his self-regard‚ an impoverishment of his ego on a grand scale” (Freud 254). He believes he is “worthless‚ incapable of any achievement and morally despicable; he reproaches himself‚ vilifies himself and expects to be cast out and punished” (254). Scully has the misfortune of losing not one love-object‚ but two. It is almost certain that the instability created by Scully’s loss of his homeland (and indeed it is a loss‚ even though it was his own decision to leave it) that compounds the loss of Jennifer‚ heightening his grief to a pathological degree. Without the comfort of the familiar coast of Western Australia and those people‚ places and objects associated with it‚ Scully is ill-equipped to deal with the breakdown of his marriage. While travelling abroad‚ Scully is “exiled” from the Australian land‚ which fuels his sense of rejection.He expresses his anger at himself for foolishly following Jennifer so blithely across the world. Scully displays symptoms similar to those of the immigrant who is forced into migration‚ where “hate directed against his own country is greater and this is easily projected onto the receiving country‚ then regarded as the cause of the immigrant’s problems‚ while he maintains an idealisation of his home country with unending nostalgia” (Grinberg & Grinberg 166).

The continuum of Australian writing that is preoccupied with the theme of land and identity will no doubt continue and Australian literature will perhaps forever seek to evoke the “Australian experience” of the land. Critics‚ too‚ will no doubt persist in attempting to uncover in these works the essence of a unifying national identity. Object-relations theory allows us great insight into the complexities of the relationship between land and the self. The land can become a persecutory force to those trapped in the defensive cycle of the paranoid-schizoid position‚ while for others‚ changes in the external landscape provides the opportunity to transform the landscapes of their inner lives. As we have seen in the work of Harold Searles‚ for those whose lives suddenly take a confusing turn‚ the land becomes an important stabilising force. For those who are haunted by a sense of guilt‚ as Freud identified‚ the harsh and lonely land of the outback serve as a kind of just punishment‚ while for the “believers‚” the land is imbued with religious significance and the power to redeem. And finally‚ our attachment to certain landscapes and our rejection of others can be seen as a reflection of our innermost fears and prejudices. Meanwhile‚ the land bears witness to our mourning and melancholy.

Psychoanalysis‚ while undoubtedly an imperfect science that cannot ever tell “the whole story‚” allows us glimmers of insight into a fictional world that has great bearing on our understanding of the difficult and complex area of land and the self. Winton’s novels are nostalgic for an Australia populated by rural battlers who live isolated‚ but as we are encouraged to see‚ meaningful lives on a land they are deeply connected to. But for urban-dwellers‚ our relationship to the natural landscape may be based more on the landscape of our imaginations than the real (Clunies Ross 224-6). Our relationship with landscapes‚ both urban and rural‚ is far more complex than most popular commentators will allow and goes far deeper than merely being about connectedness or disconnectedness to untamed landscapes. How we feel about the landscapes of our homeland on a conscious level can both reveal and conceal a host of painful‚ hostile‚ aggressive and regressive emotions and transference relationships that have more to do with our personal‚ misplaced fears and fantasies than any unifying sense of “belonging” to the land.

Notes

1 For an example of popular cultural commentary on this topic, see Greer.

2 Ben-Messahel does not discuss the notion of "projection" in a psychoanalytic sense, but she does make the point that in Winton's novels "[p]lace is not only a geographical entity but a reflection of human imagination." For a further discussion of Klein's theory of "projection," see Segal 24-38.

3 For a discussion of how the infant experiences "bad" and "good" objects, see Klein, Notes 176-200.

4 Searles is quoting C. Savage, "Variations in ego feeling induced by d-lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD-25)," Psychoanalytic Review. 42:1-16 (1955). 11. Although Savage's findings are based on "normal" patients who have been given LSD, Searles states that his own research conducted with schizophrenic patients yielded similar material and led him to draw the same conclusions about this phenomenon.

7 For a comment from Tim Winton about his use of symbols, see Ben-Messahel 174.

Bibliography

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